Note: I am not writing as an “authority” on this complex and controversial issue, which is particularly divisive within the Church. My understanding is limited and quite possibly wrong. Rather, I am writing about how my current understanding challenges ME spiritually. I understand that “sound bites” mislead because they leave out important qualifications and discussions, but here are mine.
· Biblical theology: If one understands creation theology, the biblical theology of the “hardening of the heart” (individually and corporately), and an OT prophetic motif that sins of the people (particularly “idolatry” which is putting anything above God) reverse the creational order and promote the return of chaos, then Paul’s line of thought in Romans 1:18 – 32 (which is not his main point) is clear and decisive to me. A peoples’ failure to give glory to God results in a hardening of heart/mind, a turning away from (reversal of) the creational order, the results of which are manifest in the chaos of improper sexual behaviors – as well as other behaviors found in most all people.
· Genetics: The best scientific studies I know about, studies of genetically identical twins separated at birth, shows that sexual identity and preference are not genetically pre-determined.
· Psychology: To the best of my knowledge, sexual identify formation begins in one’s early years in terms of modeling and molding within one’s environment. Moreover, early formed identity is not easy to change. It is neurologically “ingrained.” Anecdotally, I know stories where home abuse was a factor toward one’s sexual identity development. I know a person who tells how he accepted an identity that he was rather bullied into by peers. There are some who out of loneliness found acceptance through a change of orientation. Whereas these factors are admittedly inadequate as explanations,* I mention them because they lead me to the next point, my area of struggle.
· Pastorally: Of course, I desire that all people, me included, would move away from any self-induced chaos and toward divine order. Still, I also need to consider that some people, who are practicing behaviors that I find to be “of chaos,” may well be doing the best they can when given the combined individual, family, and social-level factors of their unique histories. It is not my role to pass judgment on them, but rather on my own failures and those of the Church. However, what I recognize most is that I desperately need divine guidance and sensitivity toward each person in order to know how to love and encourage that person, whatever their “orientation” or practice, to grow in Christ. And, I feel pretty inadequate.
Lord, help me to grow in understanding, compassion, wisdom, and
love in my interactions with all people.
Amen.
*I’ll share another challenging anecdote. A priest friend, whose occupation is to counsel priests, found he was encountering priests who wondered if they were homosexually oriented. He immersed himself in the related literature. After doing so, he began to have homosexual dreams and decided that he must have a homosexual orientation. As one hearing his story, what struck me was that his reading/thought focus had had a neurological impact that influenced his dreams, which had not been homosexual beforehand, but which he accepted as evidence of his orientation. That raises the complex issue of mental conditioning. In my “Devotional Testimony” (4/18/24), I mentioned that, as an embodied being, all my experiential perceptions are neurological, but that I think God can interact with those perceptions. I will suggest here, perhaps to be developed in a later post, that what Paul portrays as “spiritual warfare,” has much to do with monitoring one’s thought life that creates neurological “paths” which in turn shape us (see 2 Cor 10:3–6; Eph 6:10–18).
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